Intrigued by an unusual woman’s bicycle, I called the designer to find out how she got into designing bikes. I learned from Georgena Terry, the designer, that the bikes came about because of her restlessness and love for blowtorches. The story begins, of course, with her childhood. As with many engineers, she spent her time playing with mechanical things.

"I didn’t hang out with dolls," Terry said, "instead I built sandboxes and tinkered with tools."

She spent "endless hours" figuring out how to lubricate the wheels of her wagon so she could reach maximum speed while going down her parent’s driveway. It would have seemed natural for her to become an engineer, but instead she earned a theater degree.

She didn’t work as an actor, however. She loved being behind the scenes, building sets and adjusting the lighting. But this did not fulfill her.

So Terry went back to school, this time to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania to earn an M.B.A. After graduation she worked as a stockbroker, but she hated "being tied down to a desk"–it made her "absolutely nuts." Off, then, to a career counselor to find what she should be doing. The counselor gave her an aptitude test and offered the following conclusion: You love the outdoors, and you are very technically inclined. You should be some kind of engineer.

Not willing to jump in right away, she decided to sample engineering by taking a single class: thermodynamics. Having taught this subject for years, I can tell you that it is usually disliked by students. Some even find it discourages them from continuing in engineering. But not Terry, who instead found it "comforting to work with engineering and science because they tell you the truth," adding, "they are very, very logical. You put real numbers in and get real numbers out."

I suppose the next thing she did defies logic: She fell in love with a special type of welding called brazing. And here, of course, is where the blowtorch enters.

She quit her job and pursued an engineering degree full time. For a group senior project she had to use a two-cycle engine, like that of a lawn mower, to build a small vehicle. Her group decided to build a hybrid between a bike and car–something you could either pedal or power with a motor. As part of the work, they had to weld a bicycle frame from metal tubes. One member of the team went to his basement and came up with an acetylene torch. Terry watched over his shoulder as he braised the tubing together. This so intrigued her that she insisted he teach her how to weld.

Finding the Perfect Fit

She never lost interest in this type of welding. So intriguing was it to her that two years after graduation, she quit her well-paying engineering job and starting making bike frames for a living. As she said to me "sometimes I don’t think a lot, I just go on a hunch, and I find that that’s not always bad."

When she took her homemade bikes to rallies, women would approach her and ask, "Can you build a bicycle for me." They pointed out that their bikes gave them neck and shoulder pain. She had never thought of designing a bike specifically for women, but the idea intrigued her.

So, she went to her local library to learn about the anatomical differences between men and women. She found extensive data on these physical differences at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base because the Air Force needed to design things like uniforms and cockpits to fit both genders.

Terry discovered that a woman is not simply a smaller version of a man. For example, a woman’s upper body is proportionally longer than a man’s upper body. So, a bike that fits a man in the legs and upper body will fit women in only one of those areas. Also, the center of a woman’s muscle mass is different than a man’s. This means that when riding a man’s bike a woman’s muscles bear more stress. This makes women feel stretched out, giving them neck and shoulder pain. The key to making a woman’s bike, she decided, is getting them into a slightly more upright position. Also, she made the handlebars narrower because a woman’s shoulders are not as wide.

At first she took her bikes to weekend biking rallies. Women were very curious about the bikes and were hooked once she let them ride. In her first year, 1985, she sold 20 of these women’s bikes; the following year, 1,300; then 5,000; and today her company, Terry Bicycles, is a multimillion-dollar enterprise. Her success is not surprising, considering that about one-third of all bikes are bought by women.

Now that her company is thriving, I asked what she does every day. She told me "anything I want," adding that she rides about 6,000 miles a years, likes programming her company’s website pages, and notes that, alas, since 1988, she has been too busy to use a blowtorch.